Why E3 finally proved that consumer VR will work

That virtual reality is set to be a disruptive, and maybe even transformative, technology for the games industry is not news to anyone with half an eye on games publishers -- or a subscription to WIRED.

However, it has always been widely assumed that the market for VR is broadly defined by the hyper-committed hardcore gamers who adopted it first. The initial batch of games modified to work with these screen-and-lens headsets have appeared to confirm that idea; Elite Dangerous and EVE: Valkyrie are both great games, but are complex space simulations that leave some behind. Most of the other "experiences" released for products like the Oculus Gear VR have been relatively slight, only really compelling if you're already a believer in the technology. Indeed while Google Cardboard has provided an easy (and cheap) gateway to the tech, most of the actual apps for it are demonstrations of potential, not products people will pay hundreds of pounds to own.

That is now changing. As WIRED reported during E3, virtual and augmented reality will be a $4 billion industry by 2018 according to one measure. CCS Insights predicts some 20 million devices will be sold by the world's biggest tech companies including Sony, Facebook, HTC and Microsoft.

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It's impossible to tell whether that estimate is correct from this year's E3 alone. There are still many unknowns. But what E3 2015 did demonstrate, for the first time, is that VR is also a real product. Real people will buy and play VR games, and not necessarily the people you would expect.

After a week of testing the latest batch of VR headsets, WIRED has uncovered five core reasons that virtual reality games will be a genuine mass-market product when they finally arrive in late 2015.

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The hardware is almost fool-proof

If millions of people are going to invest in and use VR headsets, the technology needs to be good enough, and simple enough for casual users to play with every day. That wasn't always the case with previous incarnations of VR hardware; Oculus's various development kits and previous headsets from Sony, HTC and others were held back by being fiddly, unreliable or seemingly having some inherent motion-sickness issues.

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That's changed. Sony's Morpheus headset is not an imposing "kit" held together with tape and wires -- it's a bright, white and blue plastic device that looks like something you'd expect to wear while piloting a spaceship. It fits over the head easily, adjusts with one button, and just works. It's not finished, though, and some elements -- like sound, currently provided by clumsy separate headphones -- need solutions.

Similarly the consumer version of Oculus Rift is more solid, durable and adjustable than previous developers' editions. WIRED experienced no motion sickness with either headset, and while most demos were quite short it was comfortable to use for 30 minutes and up.

That's not to say we didn't have some issues. One Morpheus demo we tried lacked sound, for instance, and those niggles will have to be sorted out before launch. Most obviously Microsoft's AR Hololens is still quite raw overall -- users have to go through an eye test, administered by a trained guide, to even wear it -- and feels the furthest from release by some distance.

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VR games now have presence built-in

One of the struggles with early VR games -- both in the 90s and now -- is creating a sense of presence to go with the obvious feeling of immersion. VR is able to place you inside a scene impressively, but the jarring element was always where "you" were. If you look down in a VR game, you don't generally see your hands and body, you see empty space. But fortunately games makers are tackling that too. Oculus's new Touch controllers place your hands directly in a scene, and make it possible to perform subtle tasks like catching a ball or firing weapons in VR faultlessly.

Sony's Project Morpheus has a similar but lower-tech version of this, in which its colourful "Move" controllers are used to track your hands. It's simple, but it works; in the London Heist demo game, in which you play a gangster embedded in a robbery-gone-wrong, the controllers let you open drawers, load pistols and talk into a mobile phone. In Kitchen, a horror-tech demo by Capcom, the PS4 controller becomes your hands -- tied in front of you -- with which you try to defend yourself against a terrifying witch.

Head tracking with an external camera is also pretty much default, being a core part of Oculus Rift and Morpheus. That means you can lean into a scene, and examine objects from different perspectives, and the difference it makes on the illusion (and motion sickness) is clear. Having that sense of presence within VR roots the experience and makes it much more satisfying to interact with.

VR games are improving, rapidly

VR games are not just impressive, they are also, as of now, intrinsically fun. One of the best was a remake of Battlezone, the Atari tank-meets-Tron arcade game by Rebellion, for Morpheus. The game gives players an extremely entertaining and immersive game experience that was defined by VR, but not limited by it. In fact it transformed what might be a boring game on a TV into one of the most entertaining games at the entire E3 conference. Similarly the VR versions of EVE: Valkyrie and Elite Dangerous are both complex but rich space combat sims which, as cockpit-based titles, are very effective in VR.

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On Oculus Rift, the third-person exploration title Edge of Nowhere experiments with new storytelling techniques made possible by the hardware, allowing players to search for signs of monsters within deep ice caves and snow drifts, within the boundaries of a traditional, very enjoyable Tomb Raider-style adventure game. Other titles like SuperHyperCube, Wayward Sky and Headmaster, all announced at this year's show, look set to enrich the line-up of Morpheus games at launch. Will they all be great games? Probably not, but they will at least be approachable and colourful in a way that previous VR games have not consistently managed. Sony also showed off Rigs, a VR deathmatch game that went down well on the showfloor, while hints that No Man's Sky might one day come to VR gave a glimpse at an even brighter future for headset games. "The time has come for VR games to stop being demos and start being games," CCP's lead game designer Andrew Williams told WIRED, after we tested his company's game EVE: Valkyrie on Morpheus. "We've had this period where we've experimented, we know what works and what doesn't work. We're still making and breaking those rules, but we know enough to make a fully-scaleable game."

VR is for families, not just hardcore gamers

Another of Sony's E3 VR demos was Play Room VR, a headset take on the friendly pack-in game that greeted the arrival of its Playstation Eye camera and augmented reality ideas. Of all the demos this was the most revelatory, not because it was more immersive or beautiful than previous VR games, but because it was explicitly aimed at children. In the game's menu screen the player sees a desk and room filled with tiny, cute robots -- if you lean forward, they perform tricks or act out skits. It's adorable, and subtly interactive in a gentle, nicely-paced way.

The one Play Room game we tried saw the VR player act as a giant dinosaur, smashing buildings with their head while chasing after the robots in a city. Meanwhile two other players can play as the robots, trying to take down the dinosaur via a TV screen with traditional controllers. Like the Wii U and its second-screen gamepad, this is certain to cause arguments in the home about who gets to use the headset. But it's also more participatory than other VR experiences we've tried, and gives a sense of VR being an experience which doesn't simply shut off gamers from the real world (and other people) but brings them closer together.

It's inspiring creators

When Microsoft introduced its new Halo shooter with a Hololens "briefing", WIRED could not help but feel the demo was more interesting than the actual game. And as with Battlezone and Play Room, VR has the potential to turn even basic games into something special. Gamers love it, and the longest lines of the show were all for VR experiences at Oculus and Project Morpheus. Creators are starting to notice this opportunity. Many are making games in VR that are both more interesting, and more risky, than traditional titles. It doesn't mean they will all be quality games, but a ew will be. That's exciting, and commercially important.

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Console VR is possible

Oculus is a spectacular piece of hardware, and reports suggest that HTC's Vive is even better. But while Sony's Project Morpheus might not match Oculus for sheer muscle, it beats it in one core way: you don't need a £1,500 PC to play it, you just need a PS4. Until now it has been questioned whether that console was up to the task, but from our demos at E3 it looks like it is -- even if those games will be less visually stunning at first compared to high-end titles like Uncharted or Tomb Raider. This accessibility to console owners will be crucial for VR's adoption and the concept as a whole, because it will help establish a large enough user base to ensure continued investment in the idea by companies and games makers.

The overall result is not that E3 2015 was defined by VR -- it wasn't, it was defined, if anything, by new takes on the same massive franchises and brands as ever -- but that VR now feels like a real product, and one with a great future. WIRED came away knowing exactly what the big games like Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Call of Duty Black Ops III will be when they arrive later this year: solid, unspectacular behemoths.

VR headsets like Project Morpheus and Oculus aren't sure bets in this way, and others like HTC and Valve's Vive weren't even officially at the show. But neither are they fantasies or speculative gestures at the future -- they are both real, impressive products. That might not seem as exciting as when the ideas themselves emerged, but in terms of what they actually mean for gamers and games, VR has never been more exciting than now.